Commentary: You may recognize Bob Riley's body of work

Published: Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 4:50 p.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 6:14 p.m.

DAYTONA BEACH -- Unless you're a serious gear head, you probably don't know who he is. You could walk by him in the paddock every day and never give him a second look. Talk to him a while and you don't necessarily feel the presence of greatness.

But few people have contributed as much to auto racing as Bob Riley, who left the house Saturday morning knowing he has a pretty good shot to win the Rolex 24. In fact, take away the names Earnhardt and Petty, and no other name seems to populate the Daytona record book quite like “Riley.” Those things happen when you build most of the cars in the race's marquee class.

History might've changed dramatically if Bob Riley had decided to keep racing cars instead of building them back in the middle of the last century.

“When I was in the ninth grade, we built a little three-window Ford coupe and raced on dirt tracks around southern Louisiana,” says Riley, a Lafayette native now in his 82nd year.

Riley, never accused of being non-observant, came to a rather quick conclusion regarding his driving ability: He wasn't very good.

“No!” he answers quickly with a laugh. “I wasn't even above average.”

Thus he began displaying his love for cars by gripping a tool box instead of a steering wheel. Soon thereafter, he further narrowed his expertise.

“It came to a point where you either had to be an engine builder or a chassis builder. I went with car building,” he says.

And 60-plus years later, Riley is possibly on the verge of a ninth straight Rolex 24 win. Bob Riley -- and son Bill, who carries the bulk of the load these days for Riley Technologies in Mooresville, N.C. -- are the “Riley” you see on the entry list alongside the other information for the Daytona Prototypes.

Over the past eight years, a Riley chassis and body has been paired with horsepower from Pontiac, Lexus, Porsche, BMW and Ford to win Daytona's 24-hour event. When the teams take delivery of a Riley chassis or body, they know that decades of expertise went into its blend of science, function and art.

“One of my heroes,” says Gary Nelson, who has worked with Bob Riley on NASCAR stock cars and, in recent years, Grand-Am's sports cars. When asked to describe Riley's contributions to auto racing, Nelson just shakes his head and says, “Immeasurable.”

“I worked with him for the first time in the early-'80s,” says Nelson. “He taught me so much. It wasn't so much about the cars, but I learned a wisdom and an approach that he used. Back then, everybody was going to computer-aided design. But when you went in his office, he had a full-size blueprint of his next car on his wall. I asked him, ‘You don't do CAD?' He said, ‘No, I gotta see it.”

Even today, at a time when even grandparents are working on iPads, Riley clings to his pencil.

“We have three engineers and they do the computer-aided design, but I still have my drawing board,” says Riley, who doesn't let that board get dusty. “If I'm in town, I'm there about every day. When I go home, I think about the race cars. As soon as I go home and don't think about the race cars, then I'll retire.”

Later this year, Riley will be inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Detroit, where every form of racing is recognized -- whether powered by V8 engines, propellers or outboards, two wheels or four.

Such a diverse hall and museum is a fitting landing spot for Riley, who left LSU in the late-'50s and went to work in Chrysler's old missile division, which developed the Redstone missile that launched NASA's hopes and dreams.

From there it was a job with Ford, where he was part of the company's lead engineering team. Eventually his lifelong love of auto racing was put to good use, and his first big-time racing glory came at Indianapolis, where he combined his engineering eye with A.J. Foyt's famous right foot -- Riley designed the Coyote that carried A.J. to his fourth Indy 500 win in 1977.

But as IndyCars began losing their individual identities, Riley changed gears.

“There's a lot to those cars, but they're basically ‘kit cars' from a design point of view,” he says. “I always liked sports cars a lot. And there weren't many designers around.”

Today, there are a variety of designers, but only one true giant, whose automotive history dates back to a time when such genius was built with great hands, eyes, imagination and a drawing board. And an unquenchable passion.

Saturday afternoon, about 10 minutes after the Rolex 24 went green, Riley slowly climbed the steps to the Fan Deck atop the Daytona garages. He wanted to see how his cars were working on the east banking. At 81 and getting around with a limp and a cane, he still cares that much, and that might be his greatest accomplishment.

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